EDITORIAL - Wasting food
The new secretary of the Department of Agriculture faces his first full year in the post with farmers in Benguet giving away their carrots for free. This came after the farmgate price of the highland vegetable plummeted to just P1 a kilo. Farmers blamed a flood of imports for the price plunge, during a holiday period when demand for carrots is traditionally high.
Imports ensure supply and stabilize prices, which consumers naturally appreciate. For long-term food security, however, domestic farmers should be given sufficient support to boost their production. The challenge for new Agriculture Secretary Francisco Tiu-Laurel is to deliver on the promises given ages ago to local producers for farm support services to make their livelihoods sustainable.
The woes of carrot producers came on the heels of Cordillera farmers dumping their tomatoes in early December as a glut pulled farmgate prices down to as low as P5 per kilo.
Authorities should consider such waste of food unacceptable in a country where millions of people are going hungry, and where malnutrition and undernutrition are stunting physical and mental development of children from poor households.
Agriculture industry players have long pointed out that such waste, which is not uncommon across the country, can be prevented or minimized if there are sufficient cold storage facilities. Farmers, especially the small-scale ones who make up the majority in the agriculture sector, also need better access to markets, without being at the mercy of middlemen.
Promises of reforms in the food value chain, however, have yet to go beyond political rhetoric. The government has yet to provide an accurate inventory of crop production and scientific estimates of national demand. These are not in the realm of science fiction; for some years now, certain countries have been using technology including drones for maintaining a reliable record of agricultural production and demand.
Connecting small-scale farmers and livestock growers with institutional buyers in the food industry can also prevent the waste of agricultural commodities. This is being done on a limited scale in the case of broiler chickens. Both tomatoes and carrots
